From Vox: "Is this the way we want to live?" Andrew Sullivan on our distraction sickness — and Trump

Another writer slams democracy and the decisions the electorate makes.

This includes a great description of how a republic contains democratic impulses.

- Click here for the interview.

Sean Illing: You seem to suggest in your piece that too much democracy is a bad thing.

Andrew Sullivan: It's always been a bad thing. Democracy is only as good as the people who are in it. And people in general are shitty and we are prone to all sorts of ugliness. That's why we have a system designed to make sure that that shittiness is actually constrained by elite institutions, by the rule of law, by separations of powers and federalism, and all the other aspects.

Sean Illing: That’s a classically conservative view of human nature and government.

Andrew Sullivan: Yes, and in this country conservatism hasn’t really been conservative for quite a while. Conservatism is about the restraint of government, not the empowerment of government, and Trump has no interest in restraint. Again, this is a person who has never conceded an error, never admitted a mistake, never taken responsibility for something he's done wrong — even though the examples have been simply extraordinary.

From the New Republic: The Birth of Conservative Media as We Know It

For 2305 - this fits with our coverage of conservatism in a previous section, as well as our upcoming look at the media.

- Click here for the article.

Henry Regnery flipped through his notes a final time as he waited for the rest of the group to arrive. In a few minutes Room 2233 in New York City’s Lincoln Building would be packed with some of the brightest lights of the conservative movement, gathered together at his request. Writers, publishers, and editors made up most of the guest list, including William F. Buckley Jr., the enfant terrible of the right; Frank Hanighen, cofounder of Human Events; Raymond Moley, Newsweek columnist and author of the anti–New Deal book After Seven Years (1939); and John Chamberlain, former editor of the Freeman and an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal.

When everyone was settled, Regnery explained why he had called the meeting. As 1953 came to a close, he observed the men in Room 2233 were unquestionably on the losing side of politics. And that puzzled him. “The side we represent controls most of the wealth in this country,” he told those gathered. “The ideas and traditions we believe in are those which most Americans instinctively believe in also.” Why then was liberalism ascendant and conservatism relegated to the fringes? Because, Regnery argued, the left controlled institutions: the media, the universities, the foreign policy establishment. Until the right had a “counterintelligence unit” that could fight back, conservatives would remain a group of elites raging against a system that by all rights they should control.

- Click here for the magazine they produced: Human Events.

From the New Yorker: THE NATHAN HECHT STORY: CONSERVATIVES CAPTURING COURTS

A look at the current Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court and the role he has played in using the courts to push the conservative agenda.

- Click here for the article.

Hecht’s brief moment as a major public figure thus illustrated one of the larger themes of recent American political history: the centrality of the United States Supreme Court to the conservative movement. But the story of the following eight years in Hecht’s judicial career suggests something nearly as important: the transformation of state supreme courts into engines of conservative change.

For much of American history, state courts were relatively sleepy outposts for lions of the local bar. But starting in the nineteen-eighties, state supreme courts (particularly in states where judges are elected rather than appointed) became political battlegrounds. This was especially true in Texas, where a young political consultant named Karl Rove ran the campaigns that turned the Texas Supreme Court from all-Democrat to all-Republican. When Hecht first won election to the Court, in 1988, Rove ran his campaign. Led by Hecht and other Rove clients, the Texas Court became a firm ally of local business interests, especially the insurance industry.

Is Donald Trump really a conservative?

For this week's 2305 written assignment.

It's a commonly asked question - especially by real conservatives. There are a variety of ways to approach the question, but one way is to ask whether the positions Trump outlined in his acceptance speech at the convention mirror those in the official party platform,

- Click here for the text of the speech.
- Click here for the platform.

For more:

- On The Issues: Donald Trump.
- The Atlantic: Donald Trump Is No Conservative.
- New York Magazine: Donald Trump Jr. and the Future of Conservative Populism.
- The National Review: Trump’s Speech Makes It Official: It’s Democrat v. Democrat in 2016.

From Politico: The Supreme Court’s Conservative Run Is Over This year’s final decisions suggest we’ve passed a turning point in the Court’s rightward march.

This likely depends on the result of the November election - but this seems to be the convention wisdom.

- Click here for the article.

. . . conservatives may find themselves in a position analogous to the one that liberals occupied in the 1970s and '80s. For several decades before that, the Supreme Court had been generally friendly to progressive causes, and liberals and conservatives alike had come to see the Supreme Court as a liberal institution. On a broad range of issues, constitutional law moved to the left. But many of the most ambitious left-leaning constitutional causes of that era ultimately fell short of their goals. The Supreme Court invalidated deliberate racial segregation in the 1950s and '60s, but it refused in the '70s to take the further step of requiring affirmative steps to end de facto segregation—with the result that many liberals animated by a vision of racial integration came to see their prior victories as hollow and the ultimate result as disappointing.

Similarly, the court in the 1970s closed the door on various liberal strategies for using constitutional law to effect economic redistribution. During the Nixon administration, leading liberals took seriously the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted to guarantee a minimum income to all adult citizens, or at least that public schools must be given equal per-pupil funding regardless of the local property tax bases of the relevant school districts. The mid-20th century era of liberal predominance at the Supreme Court closed without reaching those destinations, and many liberals went through a painful process of adjustment in the decades thereafter, realizing only slowly that the courts were no longer on their side.

The presidential election is still months away, and Clinton’s election is by no means a certainty. But if it happens, a long period in constitutional development will have come to a close. The conservative victories of the past several decades will not be for naught: A great deal of law has changed, and it will not all be unraveled. But the direction will be different. Rather than asking whether abortion and affirmative action will continue, courts will ask about this or that aspect of abortion or affirmative action on the broad understanding that the practice in some form is secure.

For more:The Right-Wing Supreme Court That Wasn’t.

From the Texas Tribune: Ted Cruz Shifts Policy Stances to Suit Fractured GOP

For our look at parties in the state of Texas, coupled with the ongoing campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

- Click here for the article.

At the start of the presidential campaign,Ted Cruz told voters he would be the only “consistent conservative” in a crowded Republican field.

Then he confronted the modern GOP — a fractured party, in which each faction has a different definition of what “conservative” means.

To consistently please all of them, Cruz has had to be inconsistent with himself.
Time and again he has shifted, shaded or obfuscated his policy positions — piling on new ideas, which sometimes didn’t fit with the old.

Cruz, for instance, promised libertarians that he would show a strict respect for the Constitution’s checks and balances.

Then, the senator from Texas promised social conservatives that he would scrap one of those checks and balances, stripping lifetime tenure from Supreme Court justices.

He criticized Donald Trump’s plan for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Then he seemed to support it. He appeared skeptical of military intervention in Syria. Then he vowed to find out whether “sand can glow in the dark” there.

Cruz’s maneuvering has helped him build and maintain a base of support among the party’s activist class: If Trump fails to win the GOP nomination outright, Cruz could have enough backing among Republican delegates to win it after the first ballot at the party’s convention in Cleveland in July.

But while Cruz’s rightward shifts might have been politically smart during the primary season, they probably would create major challenges during the general election, putting Cruz far to the right of most voters.

From Scotusblog: What happens to this Term’s close cases?

A good question. For our purposes it might be best to ask how it impacts the cases the cases on the docket involving Texas. Most of the affected cases seem to involve Texas now that I think about it.

- Click here for the article.

The passing of Justice Scalia of course affects the cases now before the Court. Votes that the Justice cast in cases that have not been publicly decided are void. Of course, if Justice Scalia’s vote was not necessary to the outcome – for example, if he was in the dissent or if the majority included more than five Justices – then the case will still be decided, only by an eight-member Court.

If Justice Scalia was part of a five-Justice majority in a case – for example, theFriedrichs case, in which the Court was expected to limit mandatory union contributions – the Court is now divided four to four. In those cases, there is no majority for a decision and the lower court’s ruling stands, as if the Supreme Court had never heard the case. Because it is very unlikely that a replacement will be appointed this Term, we should expect to see a number of such cases in which the lower court’s decision is “affirmed by an equally divided Court.”

The most immediate and important implications involve that union case. A conservative ruling in that case is now unlikely to issue. Other significant cases in which the Court may now be equally divided include Evenwel v. Abbott (on the meaning of the “one person, one vote” guarantee), the cases challenging the accommodation for religious organizations under the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate, and the challenge to the Obama administration’s immigration policy.

The Court is also of course hearing a significant abortion case, involving multiple restrictions adopted by Texas. In my estimation, the Court was likely to strike those provisions down. If so, the Court would still rule – deciding the case with eight Justices.
Conversely, the Court was likely to limit affirmative action in public higher education in the Fisher case. But because only three of the liberal Justices are participating (Justice Kagan is recused), conservatives would retain a narrow majority.

From On The Issues: Antonin Scalia

In case you want detail on what makes him conservative on the issues, if not on legal reasoning.

- Click here for it.

Yes the Texas Senate was unusually conservative this past spring

So says Rice Poli Sci guy Mark Jones.

- Click here for the article.

Bathroom references in anti- HERO campaign tap into deep seated differences between liberals and conservaties

A Houston Chronicle commentator makes the following - correct - observation about the use of bathroom references in the campaign against the ordinance which would protect people in Houston from discrimination in employment and housing among other things based on a host of items including sexual orientation (being gay or trans gendered).

- Click here for the article.

A personal question today: How do you feel about public restrooms?

Do you see them as useful facilities whose benefits far outweigh the occasional untidiness?

Or, are you so disgusted by public restrooms that you avoid them at all costs, entering only in the case of an emergency, and then, only with pinched nose and value-sized pump of anti-bacterial lotion?

Your answer may reveal something about your politics, according to Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at New York University's Stern School of Business. The more grossed out you are by public restrooms, the more conservative you are likely to be - and vice versa.

This is why bathrooms are the perfect tool for social conservatives trying to defeat Houston's equal rights ordinance.

The author touches on recent research that suggests that a person's ideological outlook may be genetic - or if not - based on deep seated emotional responses to the outside world.

- From Newsweek:

Conservatives and liberals really are wired differently. Scientists can accurately predict whether a subject is left-wing tree-hugger or a right-wing gun-toter based on how their brains respond to certain images, a new study in Current Biology has found.

P. Read Montague, a scientist at Virginia Tech, said his experiment was inspired by data that shows political affiliation, like height, can be inherited. "I the same sense that height is highly genetically specified, it's also true that it's not predetermined by genetics; nutrition, sleep, starvation, dramatic physical injury, and so on can serve to change one's ultimate height. However, tall people have tall children, and this is a kind of starting point [for the experiement]," he said.

Montague and his colleagues asked subjects to look at positive, negative, and disgusting images and examined functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) of their brains. His team found that conservatives' and liberals' brains behave differently when confronted with disgusting imagery. "Disgusting images, and the mutilated body of an animal especially, generated neural responses that were highly predictive of political orientation. That was true even though the neural predictors didn't necessarily agree with participants' conscious rating of those disturbing pictures," the authors of the study said.

The test proved surprisingly accurate. "A single disgusting image was sufficient to predict each subject's political orientation," Montague said. "I haven't seen such clean predictive results in any other functional imaging experiments in our lab or others."

But wait! There's more:

- Liberal or conservative? Brain responses to disgusting images help reveal political leanings.
- Disgust Sensitivity, Political Conservatism, and Voting.
- Liberal or conservative? Reactions to disgust are a dead giveaway.

A couple long items related to gay marriage

The first presents a conservative argument in favor of gay marriage.

- Not Whether but How: Gay Marriage and the Revival of Burkean Conservatism.

It's based on what we called Burkean Conservatism in the section on ideology. It highlights the importance of institutions that evolve organically on providing stability in society. Here's a taste of the argument:

Now, for Burkean conservatives same-sex marriage is a particular conundrum because it presents so many competing narratives and so many uncertainties. In the Jonathan Rauch narrative, for example, same-sex marriage is a Burkean no-brainer. It is good for social order because it provides gay couples with caregivers and helps them build stable families that are integrated into their communities. Why, after all, would anyone want same-sex couples to raise their children out of wedlock? How can society possibly benefit from denying these couples (and their kids) the manifold increases in health, economic security, and happiness which marriage brings? Why not tie them to each other and their communities? Moreover, in the Rauch narrative, gay marriage also advances the causes of equality, liberty, and individual dignity. And still more: given the ways in which marriage has changed over the past century, gay marriage, in the Rauch view, is a natural, bottom-up evolution, whose deep social logic is revealed in the multiple ways in which gay couples are already acting and being treated as if married. On this narrative, what is not to like?

The second article is a simple look at the political process.

- How Gay Marriage Became a Constitutional Right.

The author traces the history of the effort to establish marriage as a fundamental right that cannot denied to people based on sexual orientation without a compelling reason to do so. In 1970 it was assumed that this could be done. As of last week, it could not. Again, a chunk of the argument:

In the span of 43 years, the notion had gone from ridiculous to constitutionally mandated. How did that happen?

I put the question to Mary Bonauto, who arguedObergefell before the Supreme Court in April. A Boston-based staff lawyer for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, Bonauto won the Massachusetts case that made the state the first to allow gay couples to wed in 2004. In 1971, she noted, sodomy was a crime in every state, gays were routinely persecuted and barred from public and private employment, and homosexuality was classified as a mental illness. “We were just as right then as we are now,” she said. “But there was a complete lack of understanding of the existence and common humanity of gay people.”

What changed, in other words, wasn’t the Constitution—it was the country. And what changed the country was a movement.

Friday’s decision wasn’t solely or even primarily the work of the lawyers and plaintiffs who brought the case. It was the product of the decades of activism that made the idea of gay marriage seem plausible, desirable, and right.

From 538: How Conservative are GOP Presidential Candidates?

The story featured in the previous link has this great graphic which deserves to be poured over. It contains estimates of the ideological positioning of the current candidates - announced and speculated - for the 2016 run along with actual nominees dating back to Barry Goldwater.




There are a few things worth noting in this graph. Here are a couple quick observations.

- The most liberal and most conservative candidates listed are currently running, likely due to the fact that not all candidates dating back to 1964 are listed.

- The graph supports the claim that congressional Republican have become more conservative in recent years.

A sampling of legislative agendas for the 84th Session

For 2306's first written assignment, here are a few links to legislative agendas from different groups in the state. Remember that I'd like you to focus on conflict between conservative groups - primarily because that's where conflict is likely to be during the session.

- Young Conservatives of Texas.
- Texas Association of Business.
- Move Texas Forward.
- Texas Climate News.
- Texas Partnership for Out of School Time.
- Texas Freedom Network.
- Dan Patrick Moves to Set Agenda at Lege.
- One Texas Legislature, many agendas.

I'll add more - but here's a start for you.

From the Texas Tribune: Abbott to Call for Credit for Massive Online Courses

This promises to shake things up for all of us.

- Click here for the story:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott will call for students to receive college credit for taking massive open online courses — often referred to as "MOOCs" — as part of the higher education plan he unveils on Tuesday, sources with knowledge of his plans say.

Abbott is scheduled to lay out his higher education plan in an afternoon speech at the University of Texas at Dallas.

MOOCs are online courses with unlimited enrollment that anyone — regardless of whether they are enrolled at a university — can sign up for and take for free. Right now, the courses rarely earn students college credit.

Abbott intends to make the case that to improve flexibility and affordability in higher education, credit should be offered for completing such courses.

Completion rates are low however, so not everyone sees these as a good idea. His opponent in the gubernatorial race does not mention MOOCs in her higher proposals.

Abbott's Democratic opponent, state Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth, has already unveiled her higher education policy proposals. Her plan makes no mention of MOOCs. Her proposals pertaining to affordability include providing more funding to the state's main grant program for low-income students, expanding access to a state loan program designed to encourage timely graduation and establishing a sales tax exemption on textbooks.

Assuming the change is adopted, what does this mean for community colleges?

- Here's one opinion:

Community colleges comprise a unique sector of higher education focused on the teaching and learning process. They have their own history, mission and diverse student populations, each member of which has distinct needs and aspirations. Further, community colleges have developed a considerable body of empirical knowledge and hands-on experience in providing effective pedagogical experiences. In communities across America, these institutions provide centers for lifelong learning, both by degrees and community education courses. Considering this context, MOOCs are unlikely to completely reinvent community college education or, for that matter, any other sector of higher education, as their most ardent proponents have argued. On the other hand, they have in their early use, demonstrated enough potential in expanding access and learning options to be considered more than a fad as critics of MOOCs have warned.

One author sees the push towards MOOCs as apart of a conservative war on college.

From David Brooks: The Conservative Mind

The NYT columnists provides an inside look at conflict within the conservative movement between the economic and traditional conservatives, and the consequences of the increased influence the economic conservatives (like Paul Ryan) have at the moment.

. . . there were the economic conservatives. These were people that anybody following contemporary Republican politics would be familiar with. They spent a lot of time worrying about the way government intrudes upon economic liberty. They upheld freedom as their highest political value. They admired risk-takers. They worried that excessive government would create a sclerotic nation with a dependent populace.

But there was another sort of conservative, who would be less familiar now. This was the traditional conservative, intellectual heir to Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter and Catholic social teaching. This sort of conservative didn’t see society as a battleground between government and the private sector. Instead, the traditionalist wanted to preserve a society that functioned as a harmonious ecosystem, in which the different layers were nestled upon each other: individual, family, company, neighborhood, religion, city government and national government.

Because they were conservative, they tended to believe that power should be devolved down to the lower levels of this chain. They believed that people should lead disciplined, orderly lives, but doubted that individuals have the ability to do this alone, unaided by social custom and by God. So they were intensely interested in creating the sort of social, economic and political order that would encourage people to work hard, finish school and postpone childbearing until marriage.
He's concerned that the goals of the economci conservatives make the goals of the traditionlist more difficult to accomplish.

If not us, who?

The NYT has a review of a book (so does the Washington Times) that should help students understand how the Republican Party became such an effective vehicle for the modern conservative movement. It was once a much more staid, establishment oriented party.

If not us, who? is subtitled: William Rusher, National Review and the Conservative Movement. It details the people and events that rallied behind Barry Goldwater's candidacy first in 1960, and then 1964, and would eventually promote Ronald Reagan's successful run for the White House. in so doing it would reshape and redefine the Republican Party.

For me the most interesting aspect of this story is the effort of Rusher to reorient the conservative movement from one that focused principally on elites, to one that had a populist flavor. Rusher apparently played a huge role in developing the Southern Strategy, which peeled poor southern whites away from their century and a half allegiance to the Democratic Party towards the party of Lincoln, Hoover and Wall Street. Prior to this the Republican Party did not care to connect to the "people" and was apologetically elitist. It promoted the interests of business classes, it did not promote an ideological agenda.

No mean feat. The consequences of their effort defines politics today.

- Wikipedia: William Rusher.
- Wikipedia: National Review.
- Wikipedia: Movement Conservatism. 

John Roberts: Burkean Conservative

Andrew Sullivan argues that the chief justice's ACA decision reveals that he's the only conservative on the court dedicated to the preservation of strong institutions - which was once the defining principle of conservatism. The rest seems committed to using the court to promote conservative political positions - which tend to shift. This strain is associated with Edmund Burke, whose Reflections on the Revolution in France was once required reading.

Here's a primer on Burke's brand of thought:

Burke is the father of modern conservatism, and still its wisest oracle. Tradition-minded but (contrary to stereotype) far from reactionary, he believed in balancing individual rights with social order. The best way to do that, for Burke, was by respecting long-standing customs and institutions while advancing toward liberty and equality. Society’s traditions, after all, embody an evolved collective wisdom that even (or especially) the smartest of individuals cannot hope to understand comprehensively, much less reinvent successfully.
Sullivan wonders of the other conservatives on the court share this vision of a strong judiciary independent of political parties. Here's a similar point.

The Club for Growth's Presidential White Papers

For our ongoing look at interest groups - and their influence on the 2012 elections - you might want to glance through the Club for Growth's Presidential White Papers. They are organized as a 527 organization created specifically to support or oppose the election of candidates to public office.

The white paper evaluates presidential candidates based on how closely they reflect the positions supported by the club.

Traditional Conservatism v. Contemporary Conservatism

There is a difference.

- Corey Robin on the Deep Roots of Conservative Radicalism.

- Are Neocons The Real Conservatives?

A Liberal Reads the Great Conservative Works

A nice brief interview in the National Review which helps lay out one man's understanding of the difference between liberalism and conservatism:

. . . what separates us at the most fundamental level may be our different conceptions of liberty. Conservatives value above all else what Berlin called the negative vision of liberty, namely, freedom from coercion. Liberals are more willing to balance that against the positive vision of liberty — that is, having a reasonable opportunity to realize one’s potential. The negative vision focuses conservatives on restricting the government’s ability to interfere in people’s lives. The positive vision leads liberals to believe that government has a role in guaranteeing baseline minimums in education, medical care, and healthy communities. Most of us probably accept both visions to some extent, but how we balance the two may be built into our DNA. It is not to be expected, therefore, that a liberal will be converted by reading the great works of conservatism, or vice versa. But there are rewards to be gained from doing so nonetheless. Often, we get a better understanding of what we believe by reading about a philosophy with which we have disagreements than by reading congenial literature. More important, reading its great works helps us better understand — and respect — the other side. That, at least, has been my experience.